Leveson inquiry seminar - as it happened

Full coverage of the first seminar in the inquiry into media standards and ethics, where those appearing include former News of the World editor Phil Hall

Updated

Lord Justice Leveson, centre, with inquiry members (from left) journalist George Jones; Shami Chakrabarti, the director of human rights group Liberty; former chairman of the Financial Times, Sir David Bell; Lord Currie, the former chairman of Ofcom; former chief constable of West Midlands police, Sir Paul Scott-Lee; and Elinor Goodman, former political editor of Channel 4 News. Photograph: Getty Images

9.39am: Good morning from the Queen Elizabeth conference centre where the first two of three Leveson inquiry seminars is taking place.

This morning the inquiry is looking at the pressures facing journalists in a competitive environment and among the speakers are Phil Hall, a former News of the World editor and a former Daily Star journalist, Richard Peppiatt. He quit the paper last year protesting that he had been routinely told to make stories up or at least ignore some relevant facts.

We'll be here all day – I'm joined by colleagues James Robinson and Amelia Hill who will be filing stories throughout.

10.11am: Apologies everyone for the late start - the wifi system at QEII is unusual to stay the least.

Ex News of the World editor Phil Hall is now on his feet. "Pressure is increased as circulations dwindle", he says. There were some exceptions years ago - the News of the World, the Daily Mail on Mail on Sunday, Sunday Times were pre-eminent and were not under pressure to get salacious.

But big scoops didn't necessarily deliver sales increases. The Jeffrey Archer exclusive in the News of the World when he was editor did not increase circulation.

10.16am: Hall talks about the harassment of Princess Diana and notes that none of the paparazzi who chased her, day in day out, were arrested.

"Why did the authorities not use the tools available to them" he asks saying he thought the problem would have been sorted overnight had the police had done something at the time.

He tells the audience of about 100 that journalists often did things that those in power didn't like and that yes, sometimes they were 'ruse, aggressive and unreasonable". But he says: "I have no idea how we legislate against human nature."

10.19am:Richard Peppiatt, the former Daily Star reporter is now presenting. "When the PCC won't even enforce the first section of their code - 'The press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information' – is it any surprise that newspapers push the boundaries, hacking phones, bribing police, pursuing their own commercial and ideological aims under the cloak of journalism, with reporters used as the foot soldiers?" he asks.

Pappiatt quit the Star protesting he was routinely asked to make up stories.

10.20am: Peppiatt says the issue is that every journalist has to fit in with his or her proprietor's agenda.

In approximately 900 newspaper bylines I can probably count on fingers and toes the times I felt I was genuinely telling the truth, yet only a similar number could be classed as outright lies. This is because as much as the skill of a journalist today is about finding facts, it is also, particularly at the tabloid end of the market, about knowing what facts to ignore. The job is about making the facts fit the story, because the story is almost pre-defined.

The newspaper appoints itself moral arbiter, and it is your job to stamp their worldview on all the journalism you do. If a scientist announces their research has found ecstasy to be safer than alcohol, as a tabloid reporter I know my job is to portray this man as a quack, and his methods flawed. If a judge passes down a community sentence to a controversial offender, I know my job is to make them appear lily- livered and out-of-touch. Positive peer reviews are ignored; sentencing guidelines are buried. The ideological imperative comes before the journalistic one - drugs are always bad, British justice is always soft.

10.23am: Peppiatt is on a roll now. He talks of the "ethical rot" behind the headline-grabbing revelations about phone-hacking.

As much as I resigned from the Daily Star because I'd come to believe it was Islamophobic, my conscience was troubled by another, perhaps more sinister, realisation; their hate mongering wasn't even genuine. It was a crude, morally deplorable play on the politics of fear in the pursuit of profit. They may be the worst offenders, but they are far from alone.

Beyond the headline grabbing revelations of phone hacking, this is the ethical rot that I urge Lord Leveson and the committee to consider, because it undermines real journalism, it perverts social debate, it divides communities. It makes victims of The Many, by exploiting both public and journalist, to line the pockets of The Few.

10.27am: We hear from Ian Hargreaves from Cardiff University. The conference is discussing the decline of the regional press. "This is a business and economic story of readers and consumers moving round," he says. But Hargreaves warns that the British public is losing interest in being informed or joining in debates with strong opinions.

10.30am: Now James Harding, editor of The Times, is speaking. He says that the iPad transformed journalism, and that the arrival of new tablets means that even during course of the Leveson inquiry, consumer behaviour and the way journalism responds to it will have changed significantly.

10.31am: Harding adds that he hopes "that the Leveson inquiry realises it is dealing with a very fast-moving market".

Peter Wright, editor of Mail on Sunday is now being asked about the success of the Mail's website. "Mail online is now the second biggest website in the world. We don't have a pay wall, don't intend to have a pay wall and we are hoping that by getting very substantial critical mass the advertising will follow," he says.

10.35am: Ian MacGregor, editor of the Sunday Telegraph, tells the conference that: "Demand for news is still absolutely huge" and the Telegraph views the web as "a fantastic opportunity" because it can get audiences sampling their brand.

He says the company has moved away from a pay wall idea. "We are focussing very much on choice. If you are a subscriber you can get the content on the web for free."

MacGregor says accuracy does not take second place to speed of distributing news on the web. "I pay as much attention to what goes on in the web as the newspaper."

Goldmsmiths research involving interviews with 150 journalists revealed that "because there are fewer journalists they are under pressure to be productive. It means that they turn to tried and tested sources to get stories quickly. "

10.52am: Richard Wallace, editor of the Daily Mirror, says there are huge commercial pressures in the industry.

He wastes no time putting the conference right about Richard Peppiatt's account of tabloid journalism. He says it may be a good description of the Daily Star, but it's certainly not a description of the Mirror – and it would be wrong for the Leveson inquiry to go home believing the Star's way was everyone's way. "I completely reject that [Peppiatt's] view," he says.

"There's been great pressures. The last 15 years has been about disruption as technology changes our industry, that has been a big pressure on our industry. The main pressure is managing your business ... but maintaining the integrity of your newspaper."

Elinor Goodman asks if the opinion of the paper overall is important. He says it is critical to the success of tabloid papers.

"We have rumbustious press, we have the highest circulation in the world," Wallace says, and that is because readers are getting views and news.

When you read the Mirror you know where we are coming from – ditto with the Sun and the Daily Mail.

He says it would be wrong to characterise readers as stupid or easily led. "The readers are bright and intelligent people. If they are paying the Daily Star they are not buying it as a paper of record."

10.55am: Claire Enders, who made the earlier presentation, has this to say: "Commercial pressures vary on titles, you see no correlation between ethical or unethical and profitablity. in fact the most ethical seem to be the ones that lose the most money and the most unethical seem to be the ones with the most complaints to the PCC."

Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, says the news media requires "relentless investment" and that commercial pressures on the newspaper industry are enormous, with circulation falling every year.

10.58am: Rusbridger warns that newspapers are not a product of normal economic models, and survive despite the downturn in advertising and circulation.

"The national newspaper market is not a market at all. There is the BBC which is national, there is the subsidised bit of us – the Guardian is subsidised by the Scott Trust. But that really just gets us on to the playing field with the Times which is subsidised by Rupert Murdoch, God bless him, and the Independent, which is subsidised by Lebedev, God bless him."

11.06am: The Sunday Telegraph's Ian MacGregor takes exception to remarks by Elinor Goodman that there is probably very little original journalism or fact-checking in free newspapers.

"The idea that things are just cut and pasted and just thrown in without checking is not true," he says. He says that it would be dangerous for the Leveson inquiry to come away from today's seminar thinking that "competitive pressures" in free newspapers or the web "might lead to short cuts". He said he was "very proud" of Metro which is founded while he worked at Associated Newspapers.

"If you are a 20 minute read for the tube and you are telling people what is going on in an apoltical way and you are taking copy from PA or Reuters, I don't think there's anything wrong with that," he says.

11.10am: The conference is now taking a break for 30 minutes

11.50am: Welcome back - the Leveson inquiry seminar has restarted with media commentator Roy Greenslade – formerly editor of the Daily Mirror – invited to make some ad hoc remarks.

He's slightly taken by surprise but obliges:

"The first thing to grasp is the culture in a popular newspaper is different, closer to the kind of thing you heard from Richard Peppiatt, closer to the kind of thing Phil Hall said.

"Tabloid newspapers works on a very rigid hierarchy. What the editor wants he gets.

"There is no doubt the editor is the creature of the proprietor. No editor will tell you that of course because it's an unspoken agreement when you are serving as an editor."

He adds: "Within the newsroom, the editor has his sway and within the newsroom there are mini-hierarchies – executive editors etc – the subs are all answerable to the people above them and the shit rolls down and the shit gets pushed up, never let that [thought] drift away. That's where Richard Peppiatt is right.

"That doesn't necessarily cause any ethical problems. Most of the content of most popular newspapers is unremarkable in terms of how it is obtained," Greenslade said.

He adds:

"While I agree that the great splash or scoop doesn't move many copies, it is still the case of intense competition, competition that you must be first and you must be fast these days. Pressures now more intense, you don't know if you exclusive is going to be tweeted before you put it up.

"The other thing is we have become much more hooked on celebrities, that the stories should be told through celebrities....the story that is worst about them, or puts them in the worst possible light is the best seller.

"The focus on celebrities and the fact that celebrities try to stop it is the reason for phone-hacking. He said it was just a logical step beyond old pressures on journalists, for instance, to get ex-directory telephone numbers."

11.53am: Dominic Mohan, serving editor of The Sun, now talking. This should be good - he rarely speaks at public events.

He disagrees that there is lack of interest in news, or that scoops don't shift newspapers.

"The day Michael Jackson died – 326,000 copies in the one day, more than the circulation of Independent and Guardian," he said.

He adds that celebrity stories were garnered from good relationships with agents and PRs and said it was analogous to the political lobby system where journalists get stories from contacts within the Westminster village.

12.04pm: Tony Gallagher, editor of the Daily Telegraph and former news editor of the Daily Mail, is being asked to describe similarities and different approaches of tabloid and broadsheet papers.

He deviates slightly – but makes the point that journalistic work flow is now different because reporters are filing live to the web and later to the paper.

"Don't notice any huge difference between the culture in mid market and the Daily Telegraph that I edit," he says.

"There's a desire to be quick, to be accurate and to ensure you have the best version of the story. It's as simple as that."

Gallagher goes on to protest at the absence in the room of any internet companies, which he believes pose a major threat to newspapers:

"I don't believe there's anyone here from the big search engine companies, Google, Yahoo. They haven't really cropped up in the discussion so far. Most newspaper executives would agree with me that those organisations pose a very substantial threat to newspapers.

"I will give you an example of that - newspapers are under a huge and growing pressure. Steve Jobs death about half past midnight made the late editions of the paper - we have it in about 200,000 copies [of the paper].

"But by 10.30 this morning, we had four stories about him, yet Google had a whole series of stories about Steve Jobs, some from us, some from the Guardian and others, the pressure from those search engines are important."

He adds: "The truth is they are working harder, they are working longer hours and they are doing more. Some of it is bite-sized, some is capsule journalist, just focusing on during the day rather than the end of the day."

12.11pm: Kevin Maguire, who has worked as a journalist at the Telegraph, the Mirror, the Guardian and the Mirror again, is up now. He says the similarities among newsrooms on tabloid and broadsheets – or "popular and unpopular papers as some of us joke" – is greater than Roy Greenslade thinks.

Elinor Goodman, former political editor of Channel 4 News, is leading the questioning. She is one of the assessors on the Leveson inquiry and doesn't seem too familiar with the nature of journalism in newsrooms with big web operations.

She asks whether he gets "the same buzz" breaking a story on the web as he would in the paper and asks if the speed with which people blog affects the "quality" of the copy.

12.12pm: A lawyer from Express Newspapers has said she doesn't recognise the newsroom culture described earlier (at 10:23am) by former Daily Star reporter Richard Peppiatt.

She says that Peppiatt was a freelancer and never had a staff job on the Daily Express.

12.18pm: David Seymour, former political editor of the Mirror, speaks: "I wouldn't like to see the inquiry go down the line that Roy was suggesting – that tabloids are bad, broadsheets good."

He points out that Murdoch was criticised for introducing Page 3 girls when he took over the Sun, and said:"Well look at the Telegraph page 3".

Seymour adds: "I'm certainly not defending anything going on in the tabloid press, but I would ask that a broader look is taken by the Leveson inquiry".

12.28pm: Mark Damazer, former assistant director of BBC News, says that during the 1990s the corporation was "admirably late" to any hint of a salacious story.

"We covered the stories less prominently than ITN and the newsroom was more puritan," he says. "There was real anxiety in the newsroom, the troops felt we were out of touch".

He says it was an "admirable" approach that sometimes went badly wrong.

He recalls Andrew Morton's revelations about Princess Diana and the newsroom being "quite sniffy" about what it thought was tabloidisation of the news. But then Princess Diana did her famous Panorama interview and he knew "it couldn't quite be right".

Another occasion, when Peter Mandelson was outed on Newsnight by Matthew Parris, "a BBC edict went out" that it shouldn't be covered in the news bulletins.

"It was the wrong decision, made us look foolish and out of touch," says Damazer. "It felt so risibly out of touch with what everybody was doing, I knew it was wrong".

The BBC must plough its own furrow and has an obligation for seriousness and not just to present "the mean average of everybody else's newsroom".

12.31pm: Peter Wright, editor of the Mail on Sunday: "One of the things I ask myself, if I was the person at the centre of the story, how would I explain this set of actions.

"And you have to ask yourself and your newsroom what other complexions would be placed [on the potential story] before deciding what is being presented to you does amount to fraud or dishonesty. You can never start from the assumption that something is wrong," he says.

"You never send a reporter out to go and prove something, you send them out to examine if something is true. You very often start with a gut feeling about a certain event about which you only have partial knowledge and the job of the reporter is to find out what really is going on."

12.50pm: Dominic Mohan, current editor of the Sun, spoke a shot time ago on what sells newspapers. It is a rare occurrence indeed for Mohan to speak publicly about the News International title. Listen in:

12.52pm: Lloyd Embley from the People raises a laugh when he describes a focus group conversation he had in Sale with a cross section of newspaper readers.

"There were a few people in the room, one of them a Daily Express reader. He said 'I've read it for 20 years, I hate it but I still buy it, I've tried the Mail, it's better but I prefer the Express, my dad bought it," Embley says.

That, he says, shows the "brand loyalty" inspired by tabloids. He agrees with others that scoops don't necessarily deliver the money.

"Exclusives don't really move the dial at all. The cricket [News of the World match fixing exclusive], which we all agreed was a very good story ... their sale went down by 6.000 copies that week. But I'm sure the News off the World were very proud that that story went around the world."

Embley also takes issue with Brian Cathcart, professor of journalism at Kingston University, who suggests that newspapers may not be able to control the quality of freelance output as easily as staff.

He says: "In terms of staffing numbers the People is very low, we use freelancers, but the process is what the freelance writes - the words go through so many people before it goes to print so it's not possible [for standards to slip]."

1.00pm: Well, this incident in newspaper history was always going to come up as long as Roy Greenslade was in the room and standards of journalism were being discussed.

Phil Hall asks if Greenslade, who eons ago was editor of the Daily Mirror, is going to tell the audience how he fixed a spot-the-ball competition in the paper, then owned by Robert Maxwell, so that nobody would win the £1m prize.

He says yes it happened, he was sorry it ever happened, and that he had "unilaterally" revealed what he had done and the best explanation was in his book.

"Mea Culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa. Now that I have told the truth will Phil?" says Greenslade, to knowing laughter.

Hall then reveals how Rupert Murdoch replaced him on the News of the World by Rebekah Wade [now Brooks], the former chief executive of News International.

"The proprietor felt there was a better editor," he said, adding Murdoch never gave him an explanation.

1.26pm: Here is where we break for lunch. We'll be back after 2pm when Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger, Hacked Off founder Brian Cathcart, and the Sun's former political editor Trevor Kavanagh present to the Leveson panel.

A summary of this morning's developments:

• Editors of the tabloids defend their papers and say accuracy and ethical standards are as sound as they are on broadsheets. The Mail on Sunday editor Peter Wright says: "you never send a reporter out to go and prove something, you send them out to examine if something is true".

•Dominic Mohan, editor of The Sun, and ex-editor of the paper's Bizarre showbiz column, says stories about celebrities are got not through underhand means but through good relationships with them, their agents and their businesses. It's just like the Westminster lobby system, he says.

• The former editor of the News of the World, Phil Hall, said phone-hacking happened because 'checks and balances failed'. He asks why the authorities [police] didn't use the "tools available" to stop things such as the harassment of Princess Diana. None of paparazzi who chased her, day in day out, were arrested. If they had been, the problem would have gone away overnight.

• Former Daily Star journalist Richard Peppiatt makes what professor of communications at Westminster University Steven Barnett called a "compelling" presentation describing pressure he was under to make stories up. Several editors including Richard Wallace of the Daily Mirror say this is not true of their papers.

• Sunday Telegraph editor Ian MacGregor takes issue to suggestions that free papers (he was the founding editor of the Metro) was 'cut and paste' journalism.

• Daily Telegraph editor Tony Gallagher says journalists are working harder and longer hours because they have to file to the web as well as the paper.

2.12pm: Leveson seminar about to start again.

But not before we all top up our WiFi connections – £95 for the day to keep going. Quite unbelievable that a conference centre in this day and age thinks it can keep attracting custom with these kind of fees.

2.14pm: Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of the Guardian, is now making his presentation in the second seminar, examining the rights and responsibilities of the press.

He kicks off by saying: "Anyone wanting to know why a free press matters could do worse than study the story of how the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World was uncovered – looking both at the dogs that barked, and those that didn't."

Newspapers, he says, face "an existential threat" due to a combination of the disruptive affect of technology and economics. He adds:

"Digital disruption comes in many forms: it sucks revenues out of print. It challenges the very idea of what a newspaper is, or what journalism does. The sort of expensive and time consuming journalism Nick Davies does is threatened in many news organisations by the quite understandable need to cut costs. "

2.21pm: Rusbridger's speech, entitled 'the importance of a free press', describes a world in which "countless blogs, platforms and websites reproduce some of the functions of newspapers" but very few replicate the entire package of a paper because the business model is so "unpromising".

But he adds that technology has changed the emphasis of power within the modern media landscape: "Gone are the days when the freedom of the press is limited to those who owned one."

Rusbridger refers to the presentation by respected media analyst Clare Enders this morning which showed the decline of regional newspapers and said that for the first time since the enlightenment, it is possible to imagine societies without any agreed or verifiable forms of the truth.

"As journalists we would like it to be self-evident that what we do is as crucial to democracy as a clean water supply or a fire service," he says. "That surveys show that this is not a widely held view ought to be a matter for self-reflection."

2.22pm: Meanwhile, Channel 4's head of home news Ed Fraser has been talking to the Mirror's Kevin Maguire over coffee. According to Fraser, Maguire described the Leveson inquiry so far as "part Truth and Reconciliation Committee, part Stalinist show trial".

2.25pm: Freedom of the press is precious and was fought for over 400 years, says Rusbridger. It is the enemy of totalitarian governments and anyone who believes journalists should be licensed, something that was abolished in 1695, should reflect upon history.

He adds:

"When people talk about 'licensing' journalists or newspapers the instinct should be to refer them to history. Read about how licensing of the press in Britain was abolished in 1695. Read about how Wilkes, Cobbet, Locke, Milton, Mill, Junius and countless anonymous writers, lawyers and printers argued and battled for the comparative freedoms the press in Britain enjoys. Remember how the freedoms won here became a model for much of the rest of the world. And be conscious how the world still watches us to see how we protect those freedoms."

2.30pm: Rusbridger is now finished and it's over to Trevor Kavanagh, the former political editor of The Sun.

He says the PCC has clear rules on impropriety but newspapers should be free to put politicians or footballers under scrutiny.

"Sometimes they make mistakes, but considering the number of stories and the number of papers, not that many," he says.

Referring to last week's high court decision not to punish the Daily Mirror publisher for publishing stories about Rio Ferdinand's extra-marital affair, he said the judge seemed to have reluctantly come to his decision, but it was an important one for all papers.

He says the judge's decision to side with the paper "will have delighted all editors even those at the Guardian and Independent who seem perpetually to be holding their noses at publishing stories like that".

2.42pm: Trevor Kavanagh has just delivered the most passionate defence of the tabloid press since the phone-hacking scandal escalated in July. And it is about time too. Too few tabloid executives have stuck their heads above the parapet during this whole debacle.

Kavanagh criticised the slightly "disparaging" remarks made by one of the Leveson inquiry panel towards tabloids and attacked what he described as the "florid diatribe" presented by former Daily Star reporter Richard Peppiatt.

He said that before Peppiatt's version of tabloid life "embeds itself too deeply in the consciousness of the industry" they should know it was "a grotesque caricature of the news world I have known for 50 years."

He said it was wrong to paint such a picture of what is "a vibrant and dynamic industry which despite all its flaws is a force for good."

2.49pm: Trevor Kavanagh says broadsheets shouldn't be so condescending towards tabloids which frequently lead the news agenda, whether it's stories about the monarchy, politics or any other institution of power.

"Tabloid journalists," he says, are the "finest creative professionals in the business. Men and women who can adapt just as successfully as on other newspapers [broadsheets], though the reverse is not always the case.

"The tabloids drive the news agenda...they are followed up almost without question by the broadsheets," he says before warning that "although in this climate many of those stories would never see the light of day".

Kavanagh adds that often broadsheets are hypocritical, publishing a snippet of a great story in one of their diary columns, knowing that the tabloids will seize the nugget of information, follow it up and "do the story the broadsheets are too timid to run properly".

2.52pm: Kavanagh defended what he called "the kiss and sell" journalism and took a swipe at what he fears could be an anti-tabloid agenda of the Leveson inquiry.

"It is hard to escape the impression that it [the Leveson inquiry] is out to get the tabloids as uncultured, malpractised and unethical," he says.

He also defended what he called the "kiss and sell" journalism: "We [the tabloids] have been condemned for chequebook journalism, yet the best story in recent years was the MP expenses story which was bought by the Telegraph, not a tabloid," he says.

2.55pm: The inquiry has now also heard from Brian Cathcart, professor of journalism at Kingston University, and discussion has been opened to the floor.

A man from the Press Complaints Commission - he didn't give his name audibly - has just taken to his feet to say the challenge for the Leveson inquiry is to work out how to deal with those newspaper proprietors like Northern and Shell (owners of the Daily and Sunday Express and Daily Star) which has removed itself from the self-regulatory system.

"How do you get the newspapers to participate? Any sort of mandated participation through some sort of subscription system or some sort of levy has the feel of a licensing system," he said.

3.10pm: Tony Gallagher, editor of the Daily Telegraph, is now discussing the ethics of its MPs expenses exclusive which it clinched after acquiring a disc with unredacted information.

He says the paper was determined to publish it, there was clear evidence of criminal activity and the paper's lawyers gave very good guidance before publishing it.

He adds that the case "for the public interest was very clear", saying: "It was a story of a lifetime and none of us thought that the story would have the resonance that it still has".

Also, we didn't catch Trevor Kavanagh's entire speech on audio, but will bring you a fuller report later.

For now, listen to him here - it's includes about a third of his presentation

3.22pm: Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, has confessed to making "a mistake" when it failed to publish the prospectus for the sale of Northern Rock after it collapsed in 2007.

He told the Leveson seminar how the bank advising Northern Rock took an injunction out against the paper which, at the time, it felt it couldn't fight.

"The FT acquired the prospectus for the sale on Northern Rock after it collapsed in late 2007 and the bank advising Northern Rock took out an injunction and prevented details of that document being published even though that document was being circulated around the world.

"We decided not to fight that but I think, in retrospect, that was a mistake," he says.

Barber adds that the paper had a "serious problem" with libel laws because it was dealing with well-resourced individuals and corporates within the financial services who had no interest in freedom of speech.

He asked the Leveson inquiry to extend its focus to include the restrictive effect these laws had on newspapers.

"Libel is a serious problem for us, because we cover rich people sometimes in the City of London who are interested in protecting their reputations," and not interested in how a journalist got the story, he said.

They "resort to law firms who cover reputations management" who "demand articles are removed forthwith, otherwise proceedings will be started,"

He says fighting these cases involved "huge costs" and that there "does come a point" when you have to weigh the costs against the cost of a protracted battle with bank bosses.

"The current regulations are seriously detrimental to free speech and exchange of information," Barber adds.

3.26pm: We're coming up for another breather. Back shortly, stay with us.

3.28pm: While we break, here's a clip of Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, talking just moments ago:

3.41pm: The seminar has just broken up for 15 or 20 minutes and I grabbed a copy of Trevor Kavanagh's speech – my typing skills are good but not up to 200 words a minute.

Kavanagh is being seen among the tabloid editors here as a good ambassador for their trade.

He took issue with what he believed were "disparaging" remarks made by Leveson inquiry assessor George Jones and said he fears the inquiry will further constrict freedom of speech.

In his own words, Kavanagh says:

"Now, in what can only be interpreted as a further cloud over freedom of speech, we have this inquiry by Lord Leveson to examine the "culture, practices and ethics of the press". It is difficult to avoid the fear that this will conclude without further limits on freedom of speech.

"It is hard to escape the impression that it is out to 'get' the tabloids, implicitly seen as uncultured, malpractised and unethical.

"In the debate to follow, one question worth considering why nobody with tabloid experience, representing the overwhelming majority of readers and sales, is on this panel? Could it be that at least some of those scrutinising our activities are covertly, if not overtly, hostile to everything we stand for?

"Am I paranoid in wondering if I was invited as an acceptable face of a form of journalism which is otherwise concealed in the pale pink pages of the Financial Times, or worse from our commercial perspective, borrowed from someone else to keep up with the news millions pay to read."

4.11pm: The seminar is about to resume, but before it does some clarification from Lionel Barber from the FT on that Northern Rock episode.

I spoke to him during the break and he explained what happened. Paul Murphy, the then editor of the FT blog Alphaville, had got hold of the bank's prospectus and put some of it up on the web.

Barber was on his way to the airport for a trip to Frankfurt when he got a call from the bank's advisers' lawyers demanding they pull the story threatening legal action. He refused, but upon arrival in Germany had another threat from the lawyers demanding again the material was removed, and threatening an injunction within 15 minutes.

Barber stood his ground and the lawyers went straight to court. The judge ruled that any material from the prospectus already on the web could remain in the open but nothing else could be published. This was despite the fact the prospectus was in the public domain.

"In retrospect, we should have appealed," said Barber who was left with a £150,000 bill after the court case. At the time an appeal would have added tens of thousands, he said.

4.29pm: Joan Smith, columnist at the Independent and an alleged victim of phone hacking says: "Some journalists seem to have lost the sense that the people they are dealing with, whether they are celebrities or victims of crime, are not people at all, they are simply a story".

4.38pm: Charles Reiss, former political editor of the Evening Standard, asks the inquiry not to equate the behaviour of journalists to every day behaviour of the public.

"A good citizen is never dishonest, they can be trusted at all times. The good citizen doesn't test the laws and regulations to the limits, but good journalism at times breaks all these codes, and breaks the law maybe in a small way," he says.

He says he is worried by attempts to fetter journalists and points out that in his career at Westminster many of the subjects of his stories became friends who became good friends, but this meant that they were hurt when he wrote about them.

"Biting the hand that feeds you is not normally the code of good behaviour, but for journalism it is essential," Reiss says.

4.39pm: Mail on Sunday editor Peter Wright is talking about the best way to approach families who have lost family members.

"There aren't really any rules. All you can do is to be as polite as possible, as sympathetic as possible," he says.

"I discovered as a young reporter there were certainly some people who absolutely didn't want to see you. There were many other people who welcomed you into their home and relished the opportunity to talk about what had happened, and regarded a local institution which they respected taking an interest in the death of a loved one as a way of society paying respect".

Wright adds that 60-70% of people he approached during so-called "death-knocks" fell into the second category, a fact which he says surprised him at the time.

Mark Lewis, the lawyer who is representing several high-profile phone-hacking victims, told the audience that it was Conditional Fee Arrangements (CFAs) that allowed those victims to sue the News of the World.

"If we stopped them the News of the World would still be coming out and people would still be talking over breakfast about whose life had been ruined," Lewis says.

Lewis points out that the no-win, no-fee arrangement was used by a British cardiologist who was sued by an American publisher and Sheffield Wednesday fans who were sued by the club.

"It's about access to justice" he says, "so people are able to fight back". Lewis adds: "If papers want to use CFAs they can do". He concludes by claiming that the Daily Telegraph does so.

4.47pm: Some industry mirth here after assessor George Jones (former political editor of the Telegraph and Press Association) asks Trevor Kavanagh if he could work for the Guardian. What he is trying to establish is whether the ethics and standards are the same.

Kavanagh bristles at what he sees as an inference that tabloids are inferior to the heavies.

When Jones explains he is merely trying to establish the facts Kavanagh agrees he would have all the skills to work at the Guardian.

"Well I have been offered jobs from other newspapers but the Sun was just too much fun to give up ... as for the Guardian the thing that would bar me would be the politics," he says.

"But in terms of writing I think a story is a story is a story. Working for a tabloid trains you to be succinct. Apart from that I don't think there's any problem with a cross over.

"I don't think, frankly, good journalists who go about the practices of journalism are different ethically from one newspaper to another. We [journalists] don't set out to distort a story ... We set out to inform and enlighten our readers. As I said the difference between the Sun and the Guardian is one of a political dimension."

4.54pm: Just for the record, Alan Rusbridger says Trevor Kavanagh could work for the Guardian (as long as he changed his political views).

"I don't see any reason why Trevor couldn't work for the Guardian apart from his views on Europe," the Guardian editor-in-chief says.

4.56pm: The Sun is on the floor again. This time it's Richard Caseby, the paper's managing editor. He was formerly managing editor at the Sunday Times.

He raised concerns about the new Bribery Act which became law in July. It wasn't framed with journalists in mind but it looks like it could have journalists in its sight, which is a problem and something the Leveson inquiry should bear in mind when it came to considering regulation, he says.

5.00pm: Leveson closes the first seminar of his inquiry, and an eventful one it has been. Expect a full round up shortly.

5.16pm: Wrapping up, Leveson says the marathon session "has achieved what I hoped it would achieve" as has provided the "different perspectives" the inquiry needed to help it shape its direction further.

He thanked everyone for attending and for the "real care" that went into their contributions.

Straw poll here shows that people thought it worked well, was a unique gathering of the most senior newspaper executives in the country. Initially some seemed to be nervous when speaking but as the day wore on it became more open and discursive.

To an extent editors were sticking to company lines, but within those confines there was a surprisingly frank discussion given that the tabloids fear Leveson is out to get them.

5.32pm: A summary of this afternoon's events:

• The former political editor of the Sun, Trevor Kavanagh, has voiced concerns that the Leveson inquiry into phone hacking and press standards could become a tabloid witch-hunt. He expressed concern that one of the inquiry's appointed experts, former political journalist George Jones, referred to "the tabloids down below". Kavanagh said that reflected a school of thought which holds that the popular press is "uncultured, malpractised and unethical". "We sometimes make mistakes, but not that many," he added.

• Alan Rusbridger said press freedom has been hard won and must be jealously guarded. He pointed out that the phone-hacking story was a classic example of newspapers acting in the public interest when other institutions failed to do so. He urged those who supported licensing journalists to think how the freedoms won in the UJ became a model for much of the rest of the world and to be conscious how the world still watches us to see how we protect those freedoms.

• Mark Lewis, the lawyer who is representing several high-profile phone-hacking victims, told the audience that it was Conditional Fee Arrangements (CFAs) that allowed those victims to sue the News of the World. "If we stopped them the News of the World would still be coming out and people would still be talking over breakfast about whose life had been ruined," Lewis says.

• The number of laws journalists now have to contend with was also raised. Financial Times editor Lionel Barber said libel was a "serious problem" for the FT because it covered "rich people" in the City who had the firepower to seek injunctions and sue for libel just to get stories removed from its website. And Sun managing editor Richard Caseby raised concern about the new Bribery Act which he said was not framed with journalism in mind, but seems likely to impact on newspapers significantly